


saints, for us sinners in the sea

by skylights



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: (Of the non weewoo weewoo kind), AU, Experimental pseudo-fairytale nonsense, M/M, Sirens, and the captains that love them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2013-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-06 05:32:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1102994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skylights/pseuds/skylights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time, the sea. A ship, a captain, a song.</p><p>Land is just ink drying on a map and forever far enough to feel like a shadow on the horizon. Always further, always more unattainable than you think.</p><p>You look into a strange sky so full of stars and wonder, sometimes, if you’ll ever find your way home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	saints, for us sinners in the sea

Once upon a time, the sea. A ship, a captain, a song.

Land is just ink drying on a map and forever far enough to feel like a shadow on the horizon. Always further, always more unattainable than you think.

You look into a strange sky so full of stars and wonder, sometimes, if you’ll ever find your way home.

  


* * *

  


“You’re a long way from where you should be,” calls a voice from the water on a night when the sea is wild and this is how the story begins:

A splash, a laugh, a pale hand reaching up from beneath the waves.

There’s a boy in the water with the depths of the ocean burning bright in his eyes and when he presses a finger to upturned lips, you find that you cannot cry out, not even when your captain’s heart stills in your chest and all the world still spins on.

“Don’t be afraid,” the boy says and oh, it sounds like a secret, a half-truth told in the watery dark. You know fear as gunpowder in the air, not as a curious face watching you from the sea.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says. “Please." 

Something too sudden to be trust, too heavy for faith sparks in your chest. 

"Don’t be afraid of me.”

  


* * *

  


He never tells you his name.

Him, with skin the colour of bones scorched white by the sun.

Him, with dark hair curling always wet, almost serpentine against his brow.

Him, with the voice that pulls you in deeper than any current ever will and with a laugh so alive, so painfully free that it makes your heart ache for the moorlands you used to know.

“Who are you?” you ask him and he will only smile, can never tell.

  


* * *

  


He trades with you, most nights, sharing small fish-secrets for hours of your time. Corals for a trinket. Smiles for parchment boats. The ones you make with waxed bottoms float for hours on the surface and he loves these the most, your haphazard creations cradled like something precious between his hands as he studies them.

“This is how you stay on the water?” he asks curiously. Seawater sliding off candle wax can entertain him for hours and the pockets of your coats are sagging heavy with shells, your hands bleeding when they catch on the sharpest edges. “Will you show me?”

Your quartermaster complains of candles gone missing and letter paper running low, but there is no night too dark for you now, no words you need to speak to anyone else.

  


* * *

  


“Would you care for a game of fortune, my dear captain?” he whispers one day between the stories you share of solid ground beneath your feet. There’s seaweed braided cold around your wrist and a pocket-watch ticking in the curved hollow of his hands. “Tell me your name and perhaps I can tell you your path.”

He never tells you his name, but you tell him yours.

“James,” you say under a clear midwinter’s night as you lean over the wooden rails and you're close enough to have your fingers dip into the dark. “My name is James.”

“James,” he tries, clumsy the first time, but the way your name fits on his tongue seems to delight him. “James, James, James.” His smile is blinding in this darkest hour before dawn. “James.”

He blows bubbles at you when you laugh at his reactions, disappearing under the waves with a huff and for one moment, you are afraid that he has left, has gone away after taking all that he needs, but daybreak steals over the waves and he slips back up from the sea.

  


* * *

  


This is your path:

Here is a compass.

Here is his hand.

Here is a choice you don't have to make, had you never loved the sea and all that comes with it.

“Two paths,” he says so very softly. “One will always lead you the right way, though it may seem wrong.”

Your hand closes over something small and cold and he tastes like salt, like the winter sea in December when you pull him up to you.

This is your path and somehow, you know that the darkest roads are behind you now.

  


* * *

  


In the watery light of another pale dawn, your men try to hold you back.

“Don’t go,” they say, over and over again as waves knock against the sides of your ship, her weathered wood creaking as the world tilts portside and starboard again.

"Please, sir, you mustn’t go.”

The loyal have bound your feet with rope.

“Don’t go him.”

The kind are pulling them taut.

Don’t go, don’t go.

  


* * *

  


"I see it!” you hear someone shout, frantic and terrified. “It’s in there, in the waves!” A sack goes over your head, smelling like earth and dirt and the words come muffled after that, your world gone dark.

Your men say there’s death in the water, but there’s a tide rising in your blood and a storm in your soul, a keening in the sea that no one else can seem to hear. 

One can sound like the other, still look the same. A siren song is on the wind.

“Hold him fast, boys, keep him down!”

You know though, like the way you know how gunmetal feels against the calluses of your hands and how to kill a man without regret, you know that no one under heaven will be able to keep you away.

So you shoot your helmsman in the chest before he can tie your hands.

  


* * *

  


This is the right way, though it may seem wrong.

  


* * *

  


The water is cold when it closes in over your head and he is there, he is there.

All is quiet now. This is your path and all is right.

Blood washes off easy in the sea.

  


* * *

  


(Once upon a time, the city. A room, a mistake, a man.

Loyalty is just a word printed on a page and always close enough to taste like blood in your mouth. Never far, always nearer than you think.

You look at a shuttered face, its sharp edges gone soft with sleep and wonder, sometimes, how you found your way home.)

**Author's Note:**

> Written in an attempt to kickstart my writing game again because the 00Q NYE exchange is whupping my ass so bad now, it's not even funny D;
> 
> Merry Christmas and apologies for how strange this is!


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